


Pieces of Me and You

by SterlingAg



Series: I'm (Not) Giving Up On You [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Stiles has a life, Stiles plays chess, college kid Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 16:24:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1394326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SterlingAg/pseuds/SterlingAg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is going on with his life and his games of chess. But he never once thought that the check would be against him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pieces of Me and You

Stiles ruffled his hair with his towel. Small droplets of water fell from his bangs on to his cheeks. He wiped them away with his hand. His dark grey sweatpants hung loosely off his hips. He moved the towel across his bare chest and draped it around his neck. From the bathroom, he made his way to the kitchen. The fridge opened with a small hiss as the seal of the door was opened. Stiles reached in and pulled out a bottle of milk. He twisted the top off and took a swig from it. Ever since he was little he had loved milk. Even though his motivation for drinking it as a child was to grow big and strong, he didn’t mind his moderate height. It was also a bonus that he’d never broken a bone before—even with all the supernatural rough housing in his life.

The bottle tapped against the small table next to Stiles’ bed when he put it down. He walked over to the desk in his bedroom. His laptop was open to whatever he had last been researching for a paper. His cursor moved to minimize the page and hibernate the machine before gently closing it. Then he turned and gazed at the chessboard on the corner of his desk. He had taken up the game once again as a way to clear his mind and calm himself. So he usually played a few moves before going to bed just to round out the day. Surveying the board, he looked at all the possible moves. He moved the white knight to defend and then moved a black pawn two spaces forward. This was not going to end well for black so he shook his head and walked over to his bed.

Stiles picked up the bottle of milk as he sat on the edge of the bed. He rolled it between his palms as his mind wandered. After a moment of useless thought, he shook his head and finished off the milk in the bottle. The bottle clattered against the walls of the trashcan next to his bed. He swung his legs up and stretched across the bed. His arm reached out and turned the knob that turned off the lamp. Darkness enveloped him, save the silver moonlight streaking in from between the blinds. He turned his head and stared at the lit window. It was nearly the full moon. Stiles swallowed down the lump in his throat and ignored the little flip his stomach did.

The full moon didn’t mean anything to him.

Not anymore.

He flopped on to his stomach and pressed his face in to his pillow. But even in that position, it was as if the moon couldn’t have been brighter. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced his mind to clear. Sleep didn’t come easily to Stiles that night.

-

Stiles’ mouth opened wide in a long yawn. His sleep had been less than restful and he’d woken up frequently. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept so terribly. But now it was another day and Stiles had things to do—mainly laundry. His apartment building didn’t have a laundry room so he went down the road a few minutes to the laundromat. It was spectacular because the building was actually just across the street from the public library. He could do laundry and homework at the same time. Every college kid’s dream, he would say.

After gathering up his laundry in to their respective bags—lights, darks, thicks—he gathered his school things. Currently he was doing research for a project in his folklore class. He had to look at one piece of folklore or myth that was found in different cultures around the world and explore their differences and how the aspects could have migrated among the cultures. Even with all of the supernatural knowledge and experience at his fingertips, he had gone for the werewolf. Call him a sap, but he felt the closest to the creatures and always took every opportunity to represent them. He went over to his desk and grabbed a few books he needed to return, a notebook and his pencil case, and slid his laptop in to its case. His eyes slid over the chessboard and he paused. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought that one of the black rooks had moved. He searched his brain to remember moving the piece, but he couldn’t place that information. No matter. With a shrug he countered the movement and began to move to capture one of the black bishops.  
The door shut behind him with a soft click when he left for the day.

-

Stiles didn’t bother to stop the door as it swung open. He dropped his keys unceremoniously on to the counter. His limbs were heavy and his body ached. It had been a long day. His project had hit a dead-end and his paper wasn’t coming any further along. This was the most stuck that Stiles had been in a very long time. He let his bag thump against the floor in his room, not bothering to turn on any of the lights before reaching his bedroom. A groan came from him when he turned his bedroom light on. He thought about just sleeping naked tonight but eventually decided to pull his pajamas on. So after dawning a pair of sweatpants, he started to go to bed. He glanced at the chessboard and saw that the knight had been moved. The next move it would capture one of his pawns. He moved his rook to capture a bishop that had potential to check him. Sorry little pawn, he thought, but you’re a necessary sacrifice. With that, he turned the light in his room off and flopped on to his bed. It was only a few seconds after he closed his eyes that he fell in to an exhausted sleep.

-

He lost the pawn by the morning. But he was able to capture the bishop like he planned. 

-

After having dinner with his dad, Stiles stared at the chessboard. There was a real threat from black against his last knight and possibly his queen. So he moved his queen away from the danger zone and crossed his fingers black wouldn’t strike his king while it was unprotected.

-

Black had taken his bishop. The plan to capture the knight had been a distraction and Stiles had fallen for it. His queen clicked harshly against the board when he moved her back, one bishop short.

-

White rook captured black knight.

-

Black lost two pawns. White moved rook to check black’s king. 

-

Black moved its king under the protection of the queen and rook. White retreated—for now.

-

Stiles smirked as he moved his queen to check black’s king. This game was his. He was able to sleep soundly that night knowing that soon he would win.

-

When he woke up that morning, Stiles stretched. Air popped from his spine and he let out a content sigh. He scratched his stomach with his blunt nails and swung his legs over the side of the bed. A frown pulled down his lips when he looked at the chessboard. The pieces were all in the same places as when he had gone to bed. Maybe his opponent was still deciding their move. Not that it mattered, Stiles had a solid plan and there was no escape for black’s king. So Stiles walked in to his bathroom to shower and brush his teeth.

-  
The pieces hadn’t moved when he emerged from the steamy bathroom. Stiles frowned again as he ruffled the towel across his damp hair. He dressed quickly and simply before leaving his apartment around 11 for the library. 

Even when he had come back from the library around 3 in the afternoon, the pieces had not moved. Stiles shook his head and left his backpack on the floor next to the couch. He plopped down on the furniture and propped his feet up on the coffee table. The screen of his phone lit up when he clicked the lock button. He deftly scrolled down through his contacts before he landed on “Scotty” and he called the number. It rang a few times before going to voicemail. It was the same voicemail Scott had set up when he first got his phone in sophomore year. Stiles rolled his eyes and shut off the call.

He then tried his dad. It immediately went to voicemail which told Stiles that his dad was on duty. He closed that call too. He stared at his contacts for a moment, his eyes trained on the second name in his phone. Stiles shook his head and aggressively pushed the lock button which caused the screen to go black. 

-

It was the night before the full moon. Stiles stared out his window at the nearly complete circle. He couldn’t get his mind to settle. It wasn’t even that he was thinking about a lot of things. His thoughts just kept going from one silly place to the next. But eventually he closed his eyes and started to count sheep. He got to about 237 when he finally drifted off to a light sleep.

-

Stiles dreamed that he was wrapped in a warm embrace. He felt strong arms wrap around him and hold him close. He felt safe and secure The pressure against his back caused heat to spread across his skin. It was a comfortable feeling—one he hadn’t realized that he’d missed. But even with how familiar the gesture was, Stiles couldn’t help but to feel anxious. Suddenly the embrace became tight and squeezed Stiles until he felt like he couldn’t breathe. HE was suffocating and the only thing he could see was darkness. The darkness enveloped him and pulled him down. He was terrified. He thought he heard someone calling out to him. Whose voice was that? Why did he feel like crying?

-

He jerked awake, as if he had begun to step off an edge. He gasped for breath for a couple of minutes. The dream stuck with him and Stiles couldn’t stop thinking about it. If he thought about it, in his dream it had probably been Derek who had been holding him. Stiles shook that thought from his head because he didn’t need that right now. His room was a bit cold and he frowned. Maybe the weird dream had come from the strange temperature of his room.

Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, Stiles stood up. He was dizzy for a second and swayed. But he quickly regained his equilibrium. That was probably because he hadn’t eaten dinner that night. He made his way over to the window. It was cracked ever so slightly. Stiles frowned. He was pretty sure that he hadn’t opened the window. So then why would it be open?

His eyes widened and he opened the window completely. He stuck his head out and looked around. He squinted against the darkness but any shape was blurred. Even the nearly full moon was no help, seeing as it was a very cloudy night. A thought passed through his head but he ignored it. Derek wouldn’t have come in, would he? Stiles moved his head back inside and closed the window. He flicked the lock, thought about it a moment, then unlocked the window. He turned to look at his bed and noticed that on the side of the bed he didn’t sleep on, the sheets looked rumpled. For a second, he glanced at the chessboard. From what he could tell, none of the pieces had moved. How strange, he thought.

Then he moved away from the window and back to his bed. He looked for a long time at the chessboard. The pieces definitely were still in the stalemate from the other day. Stiles shook his head and brought his legs back up on the bed. It took a while but eventually Stiles was able to go back to sleep.

-

Stiles woke up the next morning bleary eyed and with a headache. It was probably from his awful sleep. But nothing a couple of aspirins couldn’t fix. He swung his legs over the edge and walked over to his desk. He reached down to open one of the desk drawers when a glint of sunlight to his left caught his attention. His entire body froze as he turned his gaze to see what it had been. Wrapped around the black king was a leather cord with a single blue talisman hanging from it. 

Stiles stared at it, his mouth hanging open. Then he reached out and grabbed the chess piece. He wrapped his fingers tightly around it. The edges of the piece bit in to his palm. He turned and in a flurry of motion threw a light jacket on over his sleeping shirt and stuffed his feet in to a pair of old tennis shoes. He grabbed his keys off the counter and barely stopped long enough to close the door to his apartment.

There was somewhere he needed to be.

And he needed to be there a long time ago.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. This took me forever to get out. I am so sorry.
> 
> There is going to be at least one more part to this series to wrap everything up.
> 
> Not sure when it's going to be out!
> 
> I've decided to start a Pokemon trainer Sterek fic thing so that's going to eat up a lot of my time. My other projects are not abandoned but on a small hiatus. I've just got to wrangle my muses back in, those slippery little vixens. 
> 
> Anyway! Enjoy!!


End file.
